Last year I set you a Lent challenge: to devote 20 minutes a day in God’s presence, every day for forty days. I wrote: I want you to commit to spending just 20 minutes a day focused on God. I know, that sounds both possible (hey, what’s twenty minutes!) and impossible (but I’m far too busy to…

Hopeless Saturday… Today is the end of Lent. What a day to end on. All hope is lost. But just because it’s the final day, and because everything is so hopeless, don’t rush through it. Because today prepares us for tomorrow. For a minute, put yourself in the disciples’ position. We look at the story with…

Banging The Gavel A couple of years ago on Maundy Thursday we gathered at the Church to watch The Passion of the Christ. It features an utterly brutal and devastating depiction of Jesus being beaten, whipped & crucified. It is literally gut-wrenching to watch. Some of us instead watched the BBC’s The Passion – a serialisation of the…

It Isn’t Me, Is It?! We’re approaching the climax of Holy Week and the story becomes more and more familiar. But please continue to take the time to read it, and to reflect on it. What do you notice for the first time when you read it? You are different now then when you heard it…

A Beautiful Thing… As we progress through Holy week and the story continues, we now find that the Jewish leaders have moved on from simply having Jesus arrested to having Him killed. Things have taken a turn for the worse. As the Pharisees said themselves, Jesus ‘teaches the way of God truthfully, and doesn’t care about anyone’s…

An Impossible Question? Have you ever been in a no-win situation? Where whichever course of action you take you’re going to upset or disappoint someone. And even though you’d give anything to avoid friends/family getting hurt or upset, there just doesn’t seem to be a way out. Now imagine yourself in a no-win situation where you’ve…

Making Enemies & Making Whole Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover, but He didn’t go to the court or to the Palace (although He was greeted as a king), instead He went to the Temple. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned…